A nine-year-old boy who allegedly coerced two kindergartners into performing sexual acts on a school bus in front of other children should be barred from the bus or even expelled, say the angry parents of the two victims.

The incident occurred Monday afternoon on a school bus carrying children home from an elementary school in the Greater Montreal region. The school belongs to the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board, but the parents of the victims have asked that the school not be named, so as to avoid identifying any of the children involved.

“What happened was this bully started pressuring two of the kids, one of them my daughter and another little boy, to first stick out their tongues and touch each other’s tongues,” the father of the five-year-old girl told the Montreal Gazette in a telephone interview.

“After that he demanded that they both pull their pants down and then he pressured one to lick the genitals of the other and vice versa.”

He said the nine-year-old boy has a history of physically and verbally bullying his daughter and other children at the school.

The father said he has spoken to the principal several times about the bullying behaviour and has not been satisfied with the response. It is clear the nine-year-old boy needs counselling, the father said, and should not be on an unsupervised school bus with other children.

The father learned about the incident the following day when the principal summoned him to a meeting at the school. His daughter was then brought to the office where she related some of what happened. She later told the whole story to her parents and they then had her recount it to the principal over the phone.

“The thing that bothers her the most was having her pants pulled down and kids laughing at that,” the father said.

The father said the principal told him the nine-year-old boy has been suspended for three days, but will be back on the bus when he comes back to school. The father has kept his daughter home since the incident and is now considering changing schools.

“If this had been a man who did this, there would be no doubt he would be locked up, taken away, but because he is under the age of 12, they can’t do anything. I called police and they said their hands are tied, that it is the school’s jurisdiction. They (school authorities) keep talking about his right to go to school, to continue to take the same bus. … My daughter has had her rights trampled on and so did the other boy.”

The mother of the six-year-old boy victim said her son came off the bus crying on Monday, and several of the older children on the bus rushed to the doorway of the bus to tell her what had happened. She said she asked the bus driver if it was true and he responded that he had not seen anything.

She also said she had reported earlier bullying incidents to the principal involving the same nine-year-old boy.

“I understand this kid has issues, and maybe needs help. But (the school authorities) are putting his safety before the safety of the other kids,” she said.

When she asked her son why he obeyed the older boy, “He said, ‘I was afraid. He is bigger than me. He is older than me and I didn’t want him to beat me up.’ ”

Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board chairperson Jennifer Maccarone said the head office was informed about the incident by the school on Tuesday. School board officials immediately began to investigate what happened and put measures in place to support all of the children involved, she said.

“This is severe. I think everybody recognizes this is not something that happens on a regular basis and disciplinary measures are being put in place. ”

She would not divulge what those measures are, except to say the nine-year-old is not allowed on the bus for the time being. She said the school board has notified social services.

“These are young children so not only can it be used as a teachable moment but support measures are put in place not just for the students involved but for that community, for our teachers,” she said.

“Nine years old, this is almost a cry for help,” she said. “We have to do something to help support this child. So it’s not just disciplinary measures. When I say teachable moment I mean that our goal is for this child to understand that these actions are inappropriate and hurtful … so we need social services to get him the help that he needs and support that family, too.”

Related

The board is investigating why the driver did not intervene and did not immediately inform the victims’ parents and the school board of what happened. She said bus drivers do get training in maintaining order on the bus.

“It is in part their responsibility to be supervising the children, to make sure none of these things are happening on their bus, that there is control on the bus, that it’s a safe and secure environment for the students,” Maccarone said.

She said she understands how the parents of the victims may feel that not enough is being done.

“I completely understand the distress, and their desire to alert people and feeling that it’s not enough. I don’t think as parents it’s ever enough when your child has been hurt, especially in a way like this, so I one hundred per cent understand and our hope is that we will be able to work with those families as well so that we can help them work through it.”

“It’s going to be very age appropriate. So with kindergartners we will be talking about your body, what belongs to you, what’s okay for touching … because more and more we see children getting exposure to things outside of school, (so) we have to adapt as an education community to meet the increasing demand of what the kids are so inundated with outside of school.”

About 23 per cent of children aged 9 to 16 have seen sexual images online, on television or videos/DVDs, magazines or books, according to a 2011 study by the London School of Economics and Political Science called EU Kids Online. That study also found that parents are insufficiently aware of their children’s online activity. Among children who had seen sexual images online, 40 per cent of their parents said they were unaware. A 2005 American study suggested that 42 per cent of young internet users (aged 10 to 17) were exposed to online porn, and 66 per cent of those said the exposure was unwanted.

William Bukowski, an expert on peer relations of school-aged children and a professor in Concordia University’s psychology department, suggests the practise of putting very young children with older kids on unsupervised school buses be reexamined.

“Children spend so much time on school buses, unsupervised, and the mixture of ages can be very problematic in the sense that you have kids put together who have very different understandings, very different needs, very different experiences,” he said. “A motive to push around a younger child is part of the whole aggressive bully syndrome and it’s compounded by the fact that there is no one there who is responsible except the bus driver. But the bus driver’s responsibility is to navigate, to drive.”

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.